Message from our CEO

Gardening is not about immediate success and gratification; it is about patience, commitment and a belief that your efforts will result in something special.

That magic rarely occurs before your eyes, but rather over time and usually when no one is looking. Corporate responsibility is not much different.

After years of building relationships with environmental partners, investing in our communities and improving our level of engagement with both our consumers and retail partners, I believe our commitment to corporate responsibility is manifesting itself in positive ways.

We’re nearing our goal of creating 1,000 community gardens across the country by spring 2018. We are partnering with environmental groups in several parts of the U.S. that are committed to both water quality and conservation. We are educating our consumers to help them use our products responsibly and to help homeowners in places like California do what they can to conserve water in the face of drought.

Our associates are engaged in record numbers after our commitment to give each of them two paid days off every year to volunteer in their community. And we’ve committed hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund independent third-party scientific research on water quality to help determine the impact of our products on the environment.

This site elaborates on these efforts and several others. It also describes the areas where we are committed to continued improvement. For example:

We continue to invest in improved controlled release technology to minimize the potential impact of nitrogen runoff from lawn fertilizer. This is consistent with the decision we took several years ago to remove phosphorus from our lawn fertilizer products.

We continue to focus on the safety of our control products. For 50 years, there has been a public dialogue about pesticide safety. While we have total confidence in the active ingredients we use, we are working with scientific partners worldwide to find even better solutions. We also continue to improve our product packaging to ensure safety, especially around kids and pets.

We must do more to further improve our organic product offering. We took a major step forward in 2015 with the introduction of Miracle-Gro® Nature’s Care®, a full-line of organic gardening products. Additionally, we created a subsidiary called The Hawthorne Gardening Company. One of Hawthorne’s first actions was the acquisition and expansion of a business whose products are derived from food waste. It’s a first step of an extended effort to provide for organic solutions to a wider array of consumers.

We are taking these steps and others not in search of praise. We do them because they are the right things to do.

Consumers rightfully expect the companies they do business with to be committed to improving society. People want the same out of their employer. Not only do we understand that expectation, we share it.

Yes, ScottsMiracle-Gro is a publicly traded company and we have an obligation to our shareholders to improve the value of their investment. And it’s easy to improve short-term results by cutting back on anything that doesn’t deliver an immediate bottom line benefit. But companies that drive long-term results operate much like gardeners…they continue to invest and nurture their businesses over time, realizing that the long-term benefit will be even greater.

ScottsMiracle-Gro is focused on the long-term. In 2018, our company is celebrating its 150th anniversary. Such longevity is hard to find in today’s global economy and hyper competitive environment. We are confident we will continue to grow and prosper long beyond this milestone, not just because of our commitment to our consumers, but also because of our commitment to society.

But we can’t succeed in a vacuum. We need to be constantly challenged and more willing to listen to outside voices. I hope this website contributes to that process.